A PENSIONER had a lucky escape after a mystery object was fired through a bus window - covering him in broken glass.

John McNulty, 79, was travelling on the Arriva bus along Borough Road, Middlesbrough, when what he describes as a ‘projectile’ careered through the glass and straight out of the window at the other side.

Mr McNulty, who has no idea what caused the incident, said: “We were just driving past the Gazette office when a projectile hit the bus right opposite me and showered me with glass.

“If it had hit me, I would have been dead. We were all very lucky because it missed everybody and there were probably around 15 or 20 people on the bus.

“There’s no way it was a stone because it hit the bus with such speed. The windows on a bus are reinforced, so it must have been coming at quite a velocity.

“I was very upset because it could literally have blown my head off.”

The object left a six inch hole in one window and a smaller hole in the window at the other side of the bus.

The bus pulled over and after an hour’s wait, the passengers were eventually transferred onto a new bus.

“We sat there for an hour but nobody came to help us. There was no police or ambulance there,” said Mr McNulty of Fleet House in Cargo Fleet Lane.

“I was very shocked. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens regularly.”

A spokesman for Arriva confirmed that the 65A bus had been involved in an incident but the firm were unable to say exactly what had happened. He said: “We had one injury which was Mr McNulty and we had to take the bus off the road for four days to repair the damage.

“The police have been in touch to request CCTV footage. The driver said he thought it was a brick type object, but he didn’t indicate it was any sort of gun incident.”

Cleveland Police had received reports of youths throwing missiles at buses in Borough Road on the previous Friday, but whether this was the cause of the incident was not known.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Cleveland Police on 01642 303126.